


Freak Show

by guardian_chaos



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Character Death, Character Study, Episode: s02e10 From Out of the Rain, Gen, Injury, Jack's Past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-22
Updated: 2008-04-22
Packaged: 2017-11-09 12:08:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/455284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guardian_chaos/pseuds/guardian_chaos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Man Who Cannot Die performs his act at a carnival attraction, and something goes wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Freak Show

**Author's Note:**

> _“It’s not the load that breaks you down; it’s the way you carry it.” –Lou Holtz_

Jack stares at the worn-out travel bag by his feet and breathes deep, coating the inside of his lungs with the smothering scents of dust and burning popcorn. Beyond the red and white walls of the tent surrounding him, blaring pipe music and excited chatter break through a humid summer night, while human-shaped shadows ghost past the tent and across his clothes and skin, coming and going in rapid succession.

Ignoring the crowd that does not concern him just yet, he takes a step towards the bag, feeling the tent's cloth floor shifting and flexing beneath his boots. He’s been staring down at this travel bag for so many minutes, telling himself to open it up and do what he has to do, but so far he hasn’t been able to work up the nerve for it. He decides to change this, but still has to take another few seconds to bypass his greater sense before crouching and reaching to untie the frayed rope holding the bag shut. 

With fingers that shouldn’t be so steady, Jack easily twists the rope away and slides his hand into the cloth bag, first pushing aside a few mementos from better, later days—pictures, mostly, though a few daily essentials also clutter up the mix—and then touching cold metal. 

His fingers travel along the pistol for a few seconds, finding the wooden handle and closing around it. His pulse races and for a moment the edges of the world shrink inwards. Some basal instinct that doesn’t matter anymore screams at him to let go, to run away, to not be an idiot, but he suppresses that worthless drive and brings the gun into the torchlight.

The black gleams golden, tiny particles of firelight dancing through ornately etched designs that travel all the way up to a partially rusted nozzle. It’s beautiful, it’s deadly, and he aims to kill himself with it.

For a second he can’t move and he can’t see or think straight and the carnival music is overpowering in his pounding eardrums.

But the moment passes, as it always does, and he’s back to crouching on the tent’s flimsy floor, where sticks and grass beneath make everything uneven. 

Beyond the tent, where conductors announce various acts to the excitement of a crowd full of both mature voices and higher-pitched, childish tones, a familiar voice enters the scene. The conductor speaks boldly, echoing confidently across damp grasslands and layering his voice over all other voices as he aims to introduce the world’s greatest marvel, the Man Who Cannot Die!

On cue, Jack shoves his pistol halfway into the crease between hip and belly button and shudders involuntarily at the cold brush of metal against skin. The voices outside of the tent reach a giddy crescendo, dozens of people who have heard of him—but never before seen him—cheering for his appearance as the conductor urges them on with rousing, enthusiastic chatter until the sound of their combined tones is near-deafening. 

Taking in a breath that tastes of earth and flame and baked cinnamon apples, Jack walks to the exit of the tent and raises his arms to the sides to present an impressive shadow to the crowd. His heart pounds in his chest. No matter how many times he’s done this, he’s never gotten used to it. He hears drumbeats that have nothing to do with his heart, pounding outside of the tent and quickening until finally ending with a resounding clap of metal cymbals and a second call of his stage name:

“Behold, the Man Who Cannot Die!”

His feet try to lock up on the ground, numbness running up the back of his legs and holding his calf muscles taut, but he’s running forward anyway, casting aside the tent flap and dashing into the warm night air. A crowd dressed in bright colors greets him with a happy cheer, the older clapping wildly and the younger leaping up and down in yelling fits of childish euphoria. All are bathed in the golden glow of lamplight.

Jack rubs the cold out of his hands and then waves at the crowd with a grin brighter than starshine. “Ah, beauties and beautiful gents! You’re all looking fabulous tonight. Shall we dispense with the pleasantries? I think you all know who I am!”

An affirming series of crowd cries is a good enough answer for him, so he follows through with a hand tugging loose the wooden handle from his belt and twirling the gun around with practiced fingers.

“Very well then, ladies and gentlemen!” he yells to the crowd. “This is an old trick I learned a long, long time ago.” It’s funny how hard it is to avoid slip-ups at this point in the banter. “An old hermit taught it to me. Perhaps you’d like to see it?”

Onwards! Yes, do it now! All right! The crowd cries affirmation once again.

Jack pivots on his heel, spinning in a circle and coming to a stand-still with the gun’s nozzle pressed to the curve of his neck, teasing an audience that gasps just before he lets the gun slip down again. He tosses the weapon into the air and lets it come back to his hand. “Prepare your children! This won’t be pretty, but you’ll never again see anything like it!”

He puts the gun to his head and locks up.

He tries to move. Can’t. The audience drifts about, confused, and there’s silence. 

_Aw, hell_. Jack swallows, shuts his eyes, and tries to tune out the world. _Just do it, do it, do it, do it_ —His fingers jerk, metal pressing into his fingertips.

Bang. Fire shoots across the back of his head, white-hot and lancing through his spine, and he sees flesh explode around his eyes. The back of his head is gone, his skull shattered and plunging into the tissue of his brain, and something’s not right. 

He falls amidst screams and a shower of red, collides against the wooden planks of the makeshift stage, and he’s not dead. He’s looking upwards and seeing a sky where fireflies blink as his limbs jerk violently, slamming up and down on splintered wood as his lungs heave rapidly in his chest and he’s in so much pain, so much pain, so. much. _Pain_. Blood’s spilling all around him and his hands slip and glide against it as he blindly tries to find something to hold onto and he can’t. He _can’t_. He can’t find _anything_!

Something’s pounding beneath him, vibrations from dress shoes hitting wood and a scraping of metal against ground and then the conductor, his eyes bulging from under a slanted top hat, dashes in front of Jack and braces his feet on either side of the convulsing immortal. In the conductor’s shaking, leathery hands is Jack’s gun and he aims it right between Jack’s eyes and pulls the trigger.

One more bang, a jolt and a cascade of guttural, hopeless cries, then Jack’s head falls back and there’s nothing.

And then there isn’t.

There’s no pain, but there’s no air either, and Jack gasps desperately, sucking in all the oxygen he can get until his lungs reach their breaking point and burn. Heaving the offending air from his lungs, he coughs violently and rolls onto his side, barely able to see through a fog in his eyes. All he hears is crying, retching, and unintelligible shrieks of horror from the audience. The conductor’s hand is on his shoulder, grounding him amidst the noise as color bleeds back into existence.

“Get up, Jack!” the conductor hisses through his teeth, and Jack knows why, knows that he should not cause a panic, knows that he can’t draw scrutiny to this circus because it’s already been infiltrated by people like himself and to draw panic to the place is to bring more obvious investigation, the kind of investigation that gets people killed, and he can’t let that happen.

The air rushing through his skull slowly vanishes as the break in his head seals itself, tiny prickles of dark hair sweeping across new skin. Resisting the urge to claw at the powerful itch, Jack groans, rolls onto his feet and stands. A flurry of activity is his reward, scattered applause and leftover screams intermittent across the grounds as Jack holds his arms up, as if reaching for the sky. But the sky does not reach back and so he lowers his arms back to earth, where everything looks like it’s on fire.

“Had you there for a minute, didn’t I?” Jack manages to get through a grin he's clenched so tightly that it's making his face hurt. 

In reply, the audience looks shocked, but then scattered laughter breaks out, a sign of nervous people trying to find a convincing reason to think that everything’s okay. With the laughter comes gradual applause, seeping through the crowd until it’s everywhere, whistles ringing sharply through the night as the crowd cheers excitedly, but Jack knows enough by now to not bother listening. It's too depressing to think into such things.

There’s blood trickling down Jack’s cheek and he reaches up to touch it. Beneath his palm, the red is still wet. Still warm. He’s still alive.

The hand holding his blood doubles in front of Jack's eyes, unbelieving of what's just happened.

Responding to a lull in the entertainment, the conductor runs up to the front of the stage and waves an arm across the crowd. “See what wonders you will behold at this traveling circus?” he bellows. “No other place in the world can offer you this! Am I right!?”

Anxious to please, the audience applauds and demands an encore—will the Man Who Cannot Die survive drowning? Burning? Electrocution? Can we see? Can we, can we, please?—even as Jack turns away from it all. There’s blood on the platform and blood in his hair as he dashes into his circus tent to the sounds of the conductor raving about how amazing the event was, and Jack tries not to see or hear either.

The red and white fabric of the makeshift door slaps back into place behind him and he takes a few steps into the tent before sitting down abruptly and wrapping his arms around his knees.

He’s shaking; he can’t stop shaking, and the crowd—that ranting, raving sea of moving shadows that leap and dash across the walls of the tent—rejoices, awaiting his return, but he’s not coming out again. He knows they all want him to die, but he doesn’t want to, he doesn’t want to, and he’s not dead, he’s not dead. He’s fine. Hasn’t there been enough death for one night? There’s something so wrong with these people. Hell, something’s wrong with him; look what he did. Blood in his hair, down his back, his blood, his blood, his, his, his… He can’t get away from himself.

He’s laughing when the conductor returns, but that’s not good. Laughing means there’s something wrong. He’s not supposed to be laughing because he shot himself in the head and everyone liked it. That’s wrong, he thinks, isn’t it? Isn’t it? He has no idea.

A feather light touch skims the back of his head, where the bullet went through his skull, and he stills.

“My boy,” the conductor says quietly, booming stage voice replaced by sympathetic tones. His fingers trail gentle pathways through Jack’s new hair as he continues, “the next time you need to infiltrate a place, try not to come as the main attraction. There are never enough jugglers; no one needed to know you can do this.”

Jack wants to snap back that he shouldn’t be _able_ to do this, but he refrains. “Little late for that now, don’t you think?” He forces a grin to his face, presses a hand against the cloth floor, and stands. He shakes out his head, calls out his nerves and banishes them. The crowd still roars outside of his tent, shaking the flimsy tent walls, and Jack feels more than a little ill.

The conductor, also aware of the growing calamity, pockets his hands and shifts back on his heels. “That it for the night then, Jack?”

Jack shakes his head. “This could be our last chance to attract the Night Travelers' attention.” He waves a hand at the tent’s exit, referring to beyond it, on that bloody stage. “Go give me another intro.”

The conductor raises a pale eyebrow, confusion swarming in eyes that seem far younger than the man’s face, which is a new sight given the kind of men Jack is used to befriending.

He settles his mind quickly enough though, and then gives Jack a cursory nod before putting on his top hat and running his fingers along the rim of it, making sure the hat is centered to his preference.

“Right then!” the conductor says, “Show goes on!” The tent flap is thrown aside as he runs through it, already bantering with the crowd.

Jack catches a glimpse outside just before the tent closes itself back up again, lasting long enough for him to know that there are more people outside of the tent than before, meaning that there will be new screams this time around.

He takes a steadying breath, wondering how he'd managed to become so popular with a job like this. Secret assignment, his ass. Torchwood loves to make itself known, even if not by name. They'll support him for as long as this side show lasts, but then pretend it never happened, and no one will ever know otherwise. He wonders, if the organization weren't so steeped in shadow, would death assignments like this even be allowed to exist? It doesn't seem likely, at least not carried out so haphazardly, but while Torchwood is still feigning nonexistence, this is how things are.

Taking up the same pistol as before, Jack twirls it around by its trigger and then pockets the gun. A few seconds later the conductor finishes his introductory speech for the crowd, paving the way for Jack's return.

There is applause, and Jack rushes into the summer air, all smiles and laughs and fun and games until the cold metal is against his forehead and he’s counting down, 3-2-1, I-wonder-if-this-will-be-the-last-time and boom. There’s pain, there’s fire, there’s shadows screaming and there’s nothing and no air and then he’s back again, coughing up the same familiar routine and ready to do it all over again for as long as it takes. 

A force unstoppable, not that anyone's bothering to try, the show goes on.

 

~4/22/2008.


End file.
